I have been playing Dark Eldar and Dark Angels for a very long time and am now wanting to do a fluff army for Chaos. I have a big love for the Black Legion and Word Bearers but have decided to go 100% focus on BL.

Just wondering on some army building advice to make it as fluffy as i can, Just wondering if anyone can help with ideas on marks, troops ect ect........

Looking forward to seeing what you guys have to say and have many plans for this army, even as an alliance for my DE

Y varios comentarios después malisteen responde:

The warmaster of the Black Legion is Ezekyle Abaddon. Abaddon himself controlls the largest and most powerful individual fleet from within the Black Legion, as well as the most ruthless, efficient, and elite warband, consisting primarily of veterans from the Sons of Horus - most who had stayed with Abaddon throughout, but also some who left him when the Legion split up and later returned. However, Abaddon's personal forces also include some warriors from each of the other legions, as well as Dark Mech allies, traitor guard slaves, and post heresy marines. Cult units from the shattered World Eaters and Emperor's children, banished Thousand Sons sorcerers who once were members of Ahriman's coven, Dark Apostles sent by the Word Bearers to minister to the forces of the most influential Chaos warlord, etc.

Abaddon's personal warband still follows Sons of Horus battle doctrine, which includes targeting and eliminating the enemy command structure with a 'spear tip' assault, generally conducted with teleporting terminators if the enemy command is reachable by such. If not, assault specialists in a land raider, storm eagle, drop pods, or the like are favored. Either way, Abaddon frequently leads such assaults himself against particularly important enemy command figures - there are stories both of Abaddon leading deep striking terminators and of him leading berzerkers in a land raider to this effect.

The rest of the force assaults the enemy stronghold in stages. static ranged firepower provides cover and suppression while assault units move into place to drive the weakened enemy from their positions, then dig down to hold those positions while the firepower moves up to prepare for the next stage of the advance. Though such an advance lacks the sudden overwhelming pressure of the tactics typically used by Night Lords or World Eaters, it tends to produce more immediate results than the long game often played by Iron Warriors or Death Guard, while still keeping Black Legion casualties to a minimum. Though Abaddon thinks nothing of killing those who fail him (failures, after all, are useless, and if you don't remove the cancer of failure it will spread), but he knows both that the lives of his soldiers are at a premium and that his attacks generally need to achieve their objectives quickly before Imperial forces have time to muster overwhelming opposition, and the tactics above represent a balancing act between those concerns.

The staged assault aspect of Abaddon's preferred tactics are difficult to represent within the confines of an individual game of 40k, and instead play out over several battles of a campaign where the legion alternates between playing the role of attacker with heavy artillery support and defender while the artillery is brought forward to the new position. However there are some things you can do to represent these tactics. Most significantly, make sure your troops have ultra grit. They are supposed to advance while applying pressure, assault to push the enemy off of objectives, and then consolidate onto those objectives and play a defensive game while the support is brought forward, and ultragrit CSMs with some plasma and an assault-armed champion cover all of those bases. Fortunately, the preferred equipment set and tactical use of CSM units in the 6e book fits right in with that.

The defiler was also specifically developed at Abaddon's orders for the Black Legion, to be an artillery piece that could advance with the infantry, so they wouldn't need to wait for it to move up into new supporting positions, so finding room for a defiler or two in your black legion army would certainly be fluffy.

Outside of Abaddon's personal forces, the rest of the Black Legion consists of individual Warlords who have sworn themselves to Abaddon's banner and the warbands and fleets they've gathered. You can think of these warbands as being individual detachments or grand companies of the overall Legion, but instead of being uniformly supplied with equipment and personnel, they each consist only of those troops and equipment that their individual warlord has been able to acquire for themselves. Much as with Orks, when it comes to Chaos success breeds success, and a Warlord who achieves a few successes will earn considerable spoils in the process, and will attract new followers and lesser warbands to their service, while being able to hire more mercenary forces to fill out their strength.

Many Black Legion warlords are former Sons of Horus themselves, some elevated from within Abaddon's own warband and given commands of their own, and these warlords tend to follow similar tactics to Abaddon himself. But there are just as many Warlords who have 'taken the Black' (I'm eternally thankful to the Song of Ice and Fire series for that expression) with other origins. Some are former members of other legions, others post-heresy renegades who have risen to prominence in the Eye. Some are daemon princes who never were chaos marines to begin with who decided they preferred mortal company to that of their own kind.

Even stranger and more esoteric origins are possible - one of my HQs is a Black Legion warpsmith who was originally a Jokaero technical specialist working alongside a radical Hereticus inquisitor and heretek seeking to replicate the Emperor's original Space Marine experiments in an attempt to create Sisters of Battle physically and mentally equal to Space Marines. A warp-spawned accident during experimentation transformed the Jokaero - transforming his body, dramatically enhancing his intellect, and exposing his mind to the corruption of Chaos. After years on the run, he made his way to the Eye and Abaddon's service, chased all the way by the Inquisitor and his three surviving test subjects, young Acolytes with remarkable physical and psychic abilities. Mojo serves in Abaddon's forces rather than leading a warband of his own so far, but if he proves himself in battle he may eventually be rewarded with his own command utilizing allied IG to represent dark mechanicus forces that have joined him to take part in his experimentations.

The warbands that serve these warlords are every bit as diverse as the warlords themselves, and reflect their lords individual personalities and predilictions. Some of these warbands are fanatical chaos worshipers, dedicated to particular powers or to the pantheon as a whole, others eschew the dark powers altogether, while yet more follow Abaddon's more pragmatic approach, accepting the power of chaos but considering it a tool to serve them rather than the other way around. Some follow Abaddon's battle tactics, while others prefer completely different approaches to battle - overwhelming lightning assaults, extended seige warfare, heavy mechanization, anything. Abaddon doesn't insist his warlords follow his combat doctrine, and instead sees their diversity as a benefit. Like Horus in his command of the other Legions during the Crusade, Abaddon encourages specialization in his warlords, allowing him to assign the 'right tool' to an individual task.

And all that is just 'Black Legion'. Abaddon's forces don't all wear Black Armor. He's worked to achieve long lasting alliances and inter-dependencies with the Dark Mechanicus, Traitor Titan legions, Raptor Cults, Daemon pacts, and other, non-Black Legion warlords, so that when he has need of them he can call in warriors who owe him favors from across the Eye. It's not unusual for a non-BL warlord struggling to achieve an objective to find a Black Legion warband appearing to offer support in exchange for promises of returned support in the future, nor is it uncommon to see those non-BL warlords fighting alongside the Black Legion in their next crusade. If the need is anticipated in advance, even Ork Warbosses, or Necron Pharaohs, or Traitor Guard commanders might be offered similar deals.

What does all this mean in the end? Lepaca put it best:

A good way to go about this is to ask yourself: "Who is the leader of my warband? What are his past and his ambitions?"

You're certainly free to take any force or combination of forces from the Chaos Codex and its allies within a Black Legion without being seen as 'unfluffy'. You can take a list designed purely for gameplay effect, paint it black, and be good to go. But if you want a truely fluffy Black Legion list, you should start with your warlord. Who is he? What is his past? Why did he take the Black? Who are his allies, what have been his most notable victories and defeats, how did he rise to prominence, how did these things shape his forces? Does he have a reputation for a particular specialty? How does Abaddon see that reputation, and how does he use your Warlord's forces to achieve his ends?

I tend to stick mostly to the more typical Black Legion / Sons of Horus style - so mostly undivided, everything with vets of the long war, ubergrit marine troops, defilers, deep striking terminators, allies and cultists as expendable fodder, etc. Typically led by a former SoH lord or sorcerer when I'm not using Abaddon himself. In this way I try to get an army that 'feels' Black Legiony even before you see the models. But that's by no means the only way to go about it, and as my collection grows, warlords with more distinctive and divergent styles will emerge. Bile will show up to lend his services and pick Mojo's brain, I might do counts-as versions of the other special characters (A former Alpha Legionnaire counts-as Huron, a former Iron Warrior Warsmith fallen to the worship of Nurgle - counts-as Typhus w/ techno-virus infected cyber-zombies & nurgle oblits, etc.)